A Long December

Twenty-five years ago, I was a high school kid in the 90s, and in most summers, I used whatever money could manage to save from working to get to as many concerts as I could. I first saw Counting Crows in the summer of '97 and I was hooked. I liked how their style incorporated parts of lots of different types of music. I learned to play a few of their songs on the guitar and quickly found that the lyrics could hook a teenage girl's attention as well. Adam Duritz is the lead singer and songwriter for the band and after visiting a friend in the hospital that had been hit by a car one night, he scratched out the lyrics to Long December on a napkin on his way home. The song is a melancholy ballad that looks back at a tough year but also embraces the idea that the next "year will be better than the last." How appropriate. 

I'm not usually one for thinking that things magically change on a New Year's Eve or that the number of a year brings more luck than another, but somehow this December does bring about a bit of optimism that others haven't. Maybe we are turning a corner, but not just going back to the way things were. We learned a lot about ourselves and about each other. We learned what makes people tick and what makes them give up. We learned when we could be strong and when we've had enough. It's only the 17th, but it's been a Long December, and we've all had the feeling "that it's all a lot of oysters, but no pearls." Maybe it was full hallways and fights or phone calls to parents that were sometimes tough that made it difficult to get through, but as things started to get back to normal I started to feel better about what I was doing again. And while I know we all have our tired days of figuring out how to make things work again, we are all starting to see glimmers of hope as kids figure out how to get to where we know they can be. 

When I first came to Greene Central nine years ago, I had delusions that I was going to fix everything that I thought was wrong overnight. Six years later I started to see some of the changes happen that I expected. Change didn't happen then as quickly as I wanted it to and the same is true for right now. It takes work. Hard work. But there is optimism when we see things go the way that we want them to, and this time around I can see it coming. Thanks for showing up and for doing the hard work. I genuinely appreciate you all. "It's been a long December, but there's reason to believe, maybe this year will be better than the last."

(I realize that I'm getting older and that a lot of our staff were children or may not have even been around in 1997. If you're young or just unfamiliar with the song, here's a link to it and a glimpse of the summer of my freshman year in high school.)

Why Do We Do This Job - Part 3

Kristin White is a loud teacher. That's why Emily Lahr tells her kids that they will learn her curriculum at the same time. You can't help but hear her if you teach across the hall. Her natural enthusiasm is intensified by her passion for what she is teaching and that comes out as loud and exciting. So why is she that excited? The answer lies in a decision that she made years ago and she had me hooked in the very first sentence of her story. "I wanted to do more in life than be a doctor." 

For as long as she could remember, Mrs. White dreamed of being a doctor. She worked hard in school in Kentucky where she grew up. She finished high school there with an aunt when her family moved to North Carolina. After graduating she moved to be with them and continued to work toward her goal of attending medical school. Along the way, her father contracted the West Nile virus and became permanently epileptic. Maybe it was family events that changed her mind, but somewhere along the way, she was miserable in school. She came to the realization that if she was going to be a doctor, focusing on school and school alone was all that she could do. Kristin White had a lot more to offer than that so she told her parents that she had decided to be a teacher. Like good parents, they were worried and even made her talk with a counselor. Kristin wanted to help people and she had a passion for science and while being a doctor would let her pursue both, Kristin had found a way to follow her passion while making an impact in so many other ways. 

Kristin did her student teaching at Greene Central and never left. When she was the young teacher in her department she contributes a lot of help from teachers like Kathy Wegmann and Lisa Wilson. They had been at the school for a while and decided to take her under their wing. As she stayed the science department underwent some turnover and she continued to make connections beyond her hall. She learned that a good teacher doesn't have to be strong in every area, but the school collectively has enough strong teachers to be great overall. It wasn't long before she wasn't the youngest teacher anymore and she found herself supporting new teachers in the same way that she was helped. 

Today, she's still helping everyone with the many talents that she has. Her husband, Stan, joined Greene County Schools as a teacher as well and everyone knows their children. So I asked her if a young person today told her that they were considering becoming a teacher, what she would tell them. She had another great quote,  "Make the decision that feels right for your life." Kristin's life would be very different if she had not made the decision to be more than just a doctor. And if you know anything about her, you know that our school would be very different as well. 

It's Not Political

One of the job hazards of being a principal is that people often recognize you in public and want to ask you questions. At a register this week, the person taking my money gave me that look and asked, "Where do I know you from?" Politely, I responded, "I'm the principal at Greene Central." "I thought so," he responded. That led to a full-blown conversation about "schools today." I chose to engage in the conversation because I've always thought that if you're not promoting the truth about your school, you're letting others promote the version that they believe and this was the perfect case. The clerk at the register had not set foot in our school (or any other) in a long time. Like many people, their understanding of schools today is based on what they hear. The store clerk told me that he was worried about what kids were learning in schools and if they were being "indoctrinated." 

I know that the media, politicians, and Facebook posts love to pick schools apart right now for the same things that the store clerk was worried about. But for those of us that work in a school every day, it's a little hard to figure out what they are even talking about. While we do teach the curriculums that our courses require, the real progress that I see every day involves teaching students how to be better people and how to figure out what they want to do when they leave us. There's no room for indoctrination in college prep, career development, or motivation against apathy and those things are what is really being pushed in schools today. And while it's hard sometimes to see your progress, just think back to the first month of school and compare it to now. It is working and politics or political ideology had nothing to do with any of it. Being an educator rises above those things if you're one that truly cares about kids and their development and success beyond your classroom. 

By the end of the conversation with the store clerk, he told me that I had restored his faith in the local education system. Maybe that's one win. Maybe we can think of it as growth for the public. Because at the end of the day, it's not political to grow a teenager into a productive young adult. It's just education.